I Run Like a Girl

We may never run faster than the men, but so what?

Editor's note: The Fast Life is a new column on RunnersWorld.com by pro runner Lauren Fleshman. After struggling with an injury and missing the Olympic team in 2012, she and her husband, triathlete Jesse Thomas, decided it was the right time to have a baby. Here, she’ll share snapshots from her life as a new mother, an elite runner working toward another championship team, and a lady with strong opinions on all kinds of topics.

I have a confession to make: I wish I had a penis. Just kidding. Kind of. Not really. Oh, boy. Let me explain.

My sister and I grew up with a pretty dominant dad (pictured; I'm on the right) who was really macho and worked in construction and had the language to go with it. (You’ve been warned.) Frank was the undisputed boss who got the best chair in any room, the first serving of home-cooked dinner, and complete control of the remote at all times. He’s the kind of dude you’d expect would want sons.

But no. Frank had two girls, and turned out to be an unlikely sage for feminist wisdom.

Lindsay and I were essentially raised like boys. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad teaching us to ride dirt bikes and play ball. We had a hoop in the driveway, baseball mitts, bikes, skates, and unicycles. Our Southern California cul-de-sac was home to many kids our age, and before puberty separated us by gender into awkward cliques, the boys and girls would play together and compete at just about anything.

Every day after school, Frank would shoo us out of the house, telling us to round up the kids for this or that game. If we were nervous about playing with the boys he would declare, “They ain’t got sh– on you! You girls are hard! Tough! And if anyone messes with you, you kick ’em right in the balls, and when they keel over, you grab them by the ear and drag them all the way to my front door and I’ll take care of the rest! You hear me?”

“Jesus, Frank! Watch your language!” my mom, Joyce, would yell as we tore off down the driveway. “Girls, don’t resort to violence. If you have a problem, you need to solve it with talking, okay? You hear me? Girls?”

Poor Joyce. She didn’t stand a chance against my dad’s colorful conviction, his wild blue eyes, and flying spittle. It would take years for my mom’s wisdom to crack through my competitive armor. I spent my entire childhood trying to beat the boys at everything from math to cliff-diving, and ones that made fun of girls would be rewarded with a swift kick in the nuts, to my girlfriends’ delight/horror.

All the way through seventh grade, I was unbeatable. But then in eighth grade, there was Rocky. Rocky started beating me every week in the grass “mile” loop in P.E. class. Despite shaving 30 seconds off my mile and pushing myself to entirely new levels of pain, the gap between us grew wider by the week. This infuriated me, and I cried to my dad about it.

“Puberty, Lauren. Rocky’s balls dropped and now he’s a f–-in’ animal. The other boys will start catching up soon.”

What did balls have to do with this? All the boys were going to turn into something better than me, and there was nothing I could do about it? I quickly scanned my memory from health class for what puberty had in store for me and was horrified. Boobs, hips, makeup, sex—the stuff some of my friends were grappling with that undeveloped me wanted no part of.

All my teachers preached that women could do anything men could do. Run for president. Be a CEO. Anyone who said, “Girls just aren’t as good at math,” would be lectured on the equality of the sexes. But why not sports, the thing I loved most?

I was grateful to have the same opportunities as the boys, thanks to Title IX, but how could I work just as hard but not be as good? It seemed like everything women fought to achieve throughout history was a standard set by men, so I decided to forgo female role models for the most part and emulate the guys. I didn’t want to be good “for a girl.” I wanted to be GOOD, PERIOD.

Gender differences in sport simply did not compute for a very long time. And even as I learned the scientific explanations in biology class, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Can we as women really trust science? Science once told women they couldn’t run farther than 400 meters without their uteruses falling out. What does science know, anyway?”

I have since gone on to become a professional athlete in a sport ruled by the clock. At the Boston Marathon, the female winner will likely run 15 minutes slower than the men’s winner. Nearly every woman in the race will finish behind several men who ran far fewer miles and drank far more beer during the buildup to the event. And at some point this year, we will all get passed by the dude who shows up race day with a hangover, or the guy in a pancake costume, no matter how dedicated, competitive, or feminist we are. Running forces us to acknowledge gender differences that we can otherwise ignore. As a kid, this drew tears for a frustrated tomboy, but after some growing pains, I’ve learned to think of it as beautiful.

We may never run faster than the men, but so what? Our sport is one of equal opportunity, where men compete alongside women, with no shortage of mutual respect. The elite women will get their own starting wave to showcase their talents in front of 500,000 spectators without getting lost in the crowd.

There was a time not long ago when a woman was dragged off the course for daring to compete. And not long after that, women runners were oddballs whose mere participation was lucky to be tolerated. And after a matter of just decades, we compete in larger numbers than the men, raise huge amounts of money for charity with our footsteps, fight to glorious finishes captured by an eager media, and help define the spirit of the sport and shift the tides of the running industry as a whole. I have a job as a professional runner representing an all-women’s apparel company, for crying out loud. And we don’t do any of those things by emulating the men. We do our most impressive work by being women.

Lauren Fleshman is a pro runner with Oiselle and co-founder of Picky Bars. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurenFleshman.